Soviet Films - 1920s

1920s

In the 1920s, the documentary film group headed by Vertov blazed the trail from the conventional newsreel to the "imagecentered publicistic film", which became the basis of the Russian film documentary. Typical of the 1920s were the topical news serial Kino-Pravda and the film Forward, Soviet! by Vertov, whose experiments and achievements in documentary films influenced the development of Russian and world cinematography. Other important films of the 1920s were Shub's historical-revolutionary films such as The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. The film Hydropeat by Yu. Zheliabuzhsky marked the beginning of popular science films. Feature-length agitation films in 1918-21 were important in the development of the film industry. Innovation in Russian filmmaking was expressed particularly in the work of Eisenstein. The Battleship Potemkin was noteworthy for its innovative montage and metaphorical quality of its film language. It won world acclaim. Eisenstein developed concepts of the revolutionary epic in the film October. Also noteworthy was Pudovkin's adaptation of Gorky's Mother to the screen in 1926. Pudovkin developed themes of revolutionary history in the film The End of St. Petersburg (1927). Other noteworthy silent films were films dealing with contemporary life such as Barnet's The House on Trubnaya. The films of Protazanov were devoted to the revolutionary struggle and the shaping of a new way of life, such as Don Diego and Pelageia (1928). Ukrainian director Dovzhenko was noteworthy for the historical-revolutionary epic Zvenigora, the Arsenal and the poetic film Earth.